The Wisdom in a Grandmother’s Stories
By Brittany Wilson- MC4356F.1
Thin wrinkles outline wise owl-like eyes and lead to a wide mouth releasing a soothingly powerful song as if the singer has known the words for twice her 70 years. The “fluffy” figure stands strong in colorful regalia sewn by the two strong but small hands now beating a drum. As a Lipan Apache-Mexican storyteller, Emma G. Ortega exudes the pride of both the indigenous cultures she inherited while she sings a Native American song at Austin’s 17th Annual Powwow Nov. 1.
Ortega’s story began when doctors told her mother she would not live past age five, since she was born with a bad leg and was very anemic. She said her mother was told to keep her daughter inside and safe to ensure she would even live that long. However, her mother’s decision was that her daughter was “going to enjoy the time she has on earth,” and was allowed to play outside and be a normal child. Ortega has lived 14 times longer than doctors thought possible, and said she enjoyed all of her 70 years.
Born, raised and still living in San Antonio, Ortega shares the stories she has learned and experienced with young people around Central Texas. She said she decides which story to tell by reading her “ inner feelings, those little voices within us.” She does not have a favorite story since each has a certain time to be told, depending on the lesson someone needs to learn. “Sometimes I’ll be telling a story that I think is a good story, and then all the sudden something will stop me and I’ll go to another story,” she said. “In the stories there are many many lessons of what we should do, what we shouldn’t do, how we should behave, and things that are good for us and the pitfalls we should avoid. They’re all in the stories.”
As a child, Ortega was surrounded by the tales of her ancestors, her heroes. She said most of the stories from her childhood were from her grandmother, mother and father. She said her mother’s stories were down to earth, her grandmother’s stories were about her family that taught her human lessons and her father’s stories were the best stories in the world. “I never knew if they were real or not,” Ortega said. “Later on in life they turned out to be true.”
Vel Espinoza Coahiltec, Ortega’s niece, said she remembers all the wonderful stories she learned from her aunt. She said Ortega has always been a teacher since her voice is one that many people listen to and learn from. “I know that she also teaches about respecting your elders because they have a lot to teach you,” Coahiltec said. “Honor them and let them teach you because they have experienced a lot.”
Among Ortega’s many tales, the story of the possum’s once beautiful tail is one of the most popular. Ortega explained that the possum loses all the hair on his tail because he becomes vain. Everyone laughs at the possum, Ortega said, to remind him to be humble.
She recalled that as a child when someone told her that she was pretty, her mother would thank them, adding “you are doing her a favor by saying that.” Ortega said others may see that as rude, but it taught her not to be vain like the possum.
When Ortega spoke about how she thought she knew everything when she was 15, like she said most teenagers do, her voice became youthful. The sound embodied the original emotion of a teenager but the words had the wisdom of her years. “I thought ‘my mother doesn’t know anything; my father doesn’t know anything,’ but I didn’t say it,” she said sounding thankful that she was smart enough not to voice her opinions.
She has been given the lesson of treating people the way she wants to be treated, and said if she steps out of line someone will point it out to her just as her mother did when she was a child. “My mother was very wise and I was a typical kid,” she said. When Ortega’s mother would see her daughter drop something carelessly and not pick it up, Ortega said her mother explained she had to pick up things she dropped because if she did not, the little devil on her shoulder won.
“What did he win?” she would ask her mother.
“Every time you drop something and don’t pick it up, the devil wins over the angel,” she said her mother would reply. “When you drop something, the devil tells the angel ‘oh, she belongs to me. She doesn’t care about things. And the little angel says ‘oh no, she’s going to pick it up because she belongs to me. She’s a good little girl.”
At the powwow in Austin on Nov. 1, Ortega stopped in a moving crowd to pick up a small card on the ground someone had carelessly drop. This proved that her mother’s stories taught her a lesson. “From then on (my mother) never had to tell me,” she said.
Ortega happily admitted she is still learning new things. She enjoys trying something different, even if it is only once, just to learn. Her favorite activities include cooking, traveling and going to the park with her family, but her least favorite is cleaning.
Ortega learned to enjoy the simplicity of life while growing up on the outskirts of an upper class San Antonio suburb. Ortega said she did not know her family was poor. With a roof over her head, food to eat and clothes to wear, she was happy. “But now if you don’t have something that has a big name tag on it, oh you’re poor,” she said. “To me, things have just gotten out of hand,” she said. “We need to learn to be happy about the simple things.”
With a 14-month-old grandson, Giovanni, from her only son, Grandmother Ortega is grateful his parents were taught to enjoy nature and tell stories. She said it is unfortunate we live in a time where stories that teach people of a time that no longer exists are not often told. “Right now we’re having really young boys and girls being parents and you wonder, do they remember to tell stories?” she said.
A crowd forms at the tent in the back of the powwow as Ortega sings the powerful song surrounded by her spiritual family, young and old. Ortega encompasses all ages and ideas as she shares her life lessons through stories. “I’m the old generation and I’m going out,” she said. “I tell my granddaughter, ‘I want you to know these things that I did. Someday you might want to tell your kids what their great grandmother was like.’”
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